Four V.I. chili enthusiasts traveled to Texas last week and brought a small but significant piece of Lone Star State hardware home with them to the territory.
The Texas Society of the Virgin Islands team brought back the second place showmanship award in small show at the 2009 Terlingua International Chili Competition. It’s the highest award ever won at the TICC by a Texas Society of the Virgin Islands pod in its history. (The term, pod, is essentially chili-inspired lingo for "team.")
The TICC is the highest level of competition in the chili world for both chili and showmanship and is by invitation only for those who qualify.
Headed by team captain Lori Abbots, the Hot Saucy Wenches of Betsy’s Bar – Kandi Brewer, Georgeann "Peppers" McNicholas and Trish Hardy (team cook) – won first prize for large showmanship in August at the 25th annual Chili Cook-Off. And with that, they won entré to the international competition.
Armed with gumption, camaraderie and a show in a suitcase, the quartet took off last week to challenge the big guys in the contest that’s been called "as competitive as the Olympics" and "the granddaddy of all chili cook-offs." The Texas show typically draws thousands of spectators.
The local Texas Society each year awards the winners with an RV rental, gas allowance, two plane tickets and hotel accommodations. Still catching her breath from the Texas triumph, Abbots said Friday that getting there wasn’t really half the fun.
The catch is that San Antonio, the closest place to rent an RV, is a nine-hour drive to Terlingua, "in the middle of nowhere.". "When you look out the plane window, in San Antonip," Abbots said, "all you can see is the RV’s, about2,000. It’s amazing."
Abbots, who was making her maiden trip, was in good company with Peters, one of the founders of the local pod.
"None of us was really accustomed to driving an RV, let alone on the wrong side of the road," Abbots said. "We just drove slow, took it easy and laughed a lot."
"Everybody there was so welcoming, so nice," she said. "They were impressed at how far we’d come. We came from the farthest away. A wonderful group from the Houston pod, helped us with an extra tent, and an extra stove."
However, cook Hardy insisted on bringing her own "lucky" Coleman stove, featuring a hand-painted V.I. beach landscape—the same stove on which she took intermediate honors in the chili cooking competition, placing her in the top 100 out of 325 cooks from throughout the country). "She wasn’t leaving without that stove," Abbots said.
About that suitcase. Never short of imagination, Abbots’ said pirate ship is made totally out of cardboard. She had scanned the Internet until she found a found a source for plastic rivets to hold it together. "We had seven boxes, cut and painted, that folded down and fit in the one suitcase," Abbots said. "It took us about a half hour to put it back together."
She said they barely had turned in their chili to the judges, when "we had to run back to the RV to put together our staging, and put on our pirate costumes."
Then the show began."We didn’t want to use a tent," Abbots said, "so it was two hours of constant performance, singing pirate songs – ‘What Do Ya’ Do With A Drunken Sailor?’ – doing sword fights, posing for photo ops, and handing out V.I. souvenirs, the newly minted V.I. commemorative quarters, and, naturally, rum miniatures.
"We brought a conch shell for people to blow, and a plank to walk," she said. "They loved it. And we had T-shirts to give out. Everybody knew who we were. We had about 120 e-mails when we got back."
That performance won them second place out of more than 30 national contestants for the showmanship prize. "It was exhausting," Abbots said, with a big smile, "but we did very well, indeed."
Everyone at Betsy’s Bar agreed.
